


The Emptiness Inside

by Lyn



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 23:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9294431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyn/pseuds/Lyn
Summary: Missing scene for Need. Jack understands the emptiness inside when you grieve more than Daniel thinks.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Alphabet Soup challenge on LJ.

Addiction begins with the hope that something "out there" can instantly fill up the emptiness inside.

\- Jean Kilbourne

There were times when Jack O’Neill wished he’d listened to his gut and refused to allow civilians anywhere near the Stargate and definitely not through it. Bad enough there were slimy snakeheads waiting to chew their way through your neck to enslave you from the inside out, seems you couldn’t even trust a pretty princess with a death wish and delusions of grandeur, just waiting for some poor schmuck with a soft heart and no common sense to come racing to her rescue.

Daniel made a soft sound of distress and Jack sat back down on the chair by the bed, reaching out to squeeze one of Daniel’s hands, uttering murmurs of comfort. After holding Daniel in his arms in the storeroom while he sobbed his despair, a little handholding wasn’t going to make Jack feel ill at ease, even in front of the guards. Daniel was sleeping now at least, the shackles gone, faint tear tracks still visible on his cheeks, his hair wet with sweat. Doc Fraiser said she’d pumped enough sedative into his IV to put an elephant to sleep and still Daniel struggled, though feebly, to escape the sarcophagus’ addictive hold.

“I know what this is. I know what it’s like.”

If anyone knew what Daniel was going through as he crouched in the storeroom, disheveled, energy all but spent, weapon waving about shakily, it was Jack.

In the weeks after Charlie died, Jack saw that same despairing look on his own face every morning in the bathroom mirror. The devastation, grief, and most of all the guilt, that his actions had caused so much suffering and loss to be brought upon those he loved. The blame he saw shining more brightly in Sara’s eyes than her tears had him pulling away from life itself, subsuming all that he was, all that he had, until he felt nothing. The yearning to recover what had been lost, to regain what he could no longer have dissipated like so much dust, replaced by a need to just end it all. Yet, some small shred of his will to live remained, which only served to fuel the disgust he felt at himself, at his failures.

The emptiness inside would not be ignored though. It devoured his every thought until finally he found the numbness he sought inside a bottle of booze.

The Stargate mission had come out of the blue. He hadn’t even had to resign his commission himself. The air force had taken it upon itself to solicitously suggest that it would be for his own good to leave the service, have time to mourn. Jack knew damn well it was more they were hoping the whole disaster would be quietly buried, just like Charlie. They didn’t want someone serving the country who’d allowed his own son to shoot himself with his service weapon.

And now, suddenly, they wanted him back.

Sara had been stunned into silence when he’d walked back into the house the morning after the airmen had left, his hair cut, his dress blues immaculately pressed.

“You can’t go,” she said. “I need you here.”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t. I just remind you… You need to move on, Sara.”

“Just like that?” Her eyes flashed venom at him. “Is that what you’re doing, Jack? Moving on, forgetting Charlie ever existed—“

He grabbed her wrist, pulling her closer but she struggled and he let her go, aghast at the fear in her eyes. “I haven’t forgotten,” he whispered hoarsely, feeling tears sting his eyes for the first time since the funeral. “I have to go.”

She stared at him for a long time and he saw the sudden realization in her eyes. She knew he wouldn’t be back. She turned away from him and picked up a coffee cup from the sink, drying it with savage swipes of the dish towel. “Go then.”

No goodbye, no kiss, no pleading for him to reconsider. He reported in at Cheyenne Mountain that afternoon.

He’d known from the start it was a suicide mission and he silently thanked whoever was responsible for pulling him out of retirement and placing him in charge of the first team to go through the Stargate. It fit into the plans he’d often created in his head but had never carried through on. Best of all, it would leave Sara free to move on with her life, unfettered by a husband driven mad through guilt, and secure her a decent pension to live on.

He hadn’t figured on one Daniel Jackson though. Geek scientist, brilliant obviously, total pain in the butt. It was Jackson who had figured out that the glyphs on the gate were actually addresses to other planets in the galaxy. Jackson had insisted he’d be able to get them home again once their mission was completed. What he and the rest of Jack’s team didn’t know was that Jack was taking along a bomb and he wouldn’t be coming home with them.

Moot point, since it seemed that Daniel couldn’t find the seventh symbol at first and so all of them were condemned to Jack’s fate.

“I don’t want to die, your men don’t want to die and these people don’t want to die. It’s a shame you’re in such a hurry to,” Daniel had said to him after they discovered that Ra was planning to send the bomb back to Earth loaded with a shitload of Naquadah, and yet, only a day before that, Daniel had thrown himself in front of Jack and sacrificed his life. Jack still wasn’t sure whether it had been Daniel’s words on the heels of his selfless sacrifice or whether it was just that Ra had pissed him off enough that he was finally able to see the world that had diminished to nothing after Charlie, ignited the fire in his belly and reminded him of his oath to protect the people he’d sworn to serve. What he was certain of was that he’d be damned if some young fancy-dressed kid with a parasite inside him was going to get the better of him.

It didn’t matter what had made him see that he had something to live for, he decided. They blown the bastard to kingdom come and Jack and his men had gone home, leaving Daniel behind with his new family.

Then Apophis taken Sha’ré and Skaara and Daniel returned with the team to Earth, desolate, lost and filled with hopelessness. Jack had vowed they would find them, but they all knew the chances were pretty slim. So Daniel moved on, did his job and perhaps it was Jack, more than anyone, who could see the emptiness growing and gnawing at him.

So Jack knew what it was like, and how, even though you had lost the most precious gift in the world and knew there was no changing what was, there was light in the darkness, a candle instead of a beacon perhaps but it was enough to keep you going.

When Daniel finally woke, free from the grip of addiction, full of apologies for what he had done, Jack had shushed him with the time-honored expedient of a hand over his mouth and then he had told Daniel about Charlie and Sara, and the emptiness inside.

 

End


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